Once again I'm posting a "yearly roundup" that mainly serves to let me figure out how I did last year and figure out my plans for next year. I figure no one reads these but me, but I honestly feel like it's useful to take stock and recognize my accomplishments. Plus, it lets me get the first post of the year out the door and that's always a good thing. Oh, and I found a small bug in my blog while writing this, so that's even better. Let's get started!

What I Did

In March, I (re)joined Adobe ("Hello (Again), Adobe!") as an evangelist for the Document Services team. The past year has been incredible and I've loved having the opportunity to both learn and share that with others. Honestly, as much as I've changed jobs over my career, I'd probably be a bit leery rejoining a company I left in the past, but it's absolutely been a great decision and I can't wait to get back to work on Tuesday. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed this time off, but I'm excited to get this new year started.

On the personal, but still professional front, I'm very proud of of the following:

  • I wrote 67 posts last year. My goal is 4 per month and I blew that away.
  • That's on top of 16 posts I did for the Adobe Medium blog.
  • I also wrote 3 articles for other publications (see my About). That's a bit low, but most of my "side writing" time this year was focused on the book I'm writing with Brian Rinaldi (coming out very soon now!)
  • Speaking of books, I was a contributing author to "Front-End Development Projects with Vue.js". I'm looking at the publication date and that might actually have been 2020, not 2021, but that's fine.
  • I gave 14 talks last year. Actually a few more as I gave some internal Adobe presentations as well. With COVID, only a few were in person and I don't see that trend changing much this year. In fact, my first in person talk (not yet up on my speaking page) just recently switched to virtual itself.

All in all, I'm pretty proud. I'm going to try to maintain the same goals for next year. 4 posts per month. One presentation per month. One book per year (it's actually going to be two I think).

What I Want to Do

For years I've said I'm going to learn Python. This past year I actually made some strides in it. It isn't yet a language I'm comfortable in yet (I need to get the docs at hand even for simple stuff), but I'm getting slightly more familiar with it. Oh, and while I have no doubts that it has rough edges like every language, I just keep liking it more and more.

On top of that, my rough plans for new things to learn include:

  • Microsoft Power Automate - this is a service that lets you build workflows, a lot like Pipedream, but obviously from Microsoft. I've already used this at work (and at my last job) so my plan here is to just get more comfortable with it.
  • Oracle Cloud Functions - I didn't really plan this, but a very good friend of mine works at Oracle, mentioned this, and I figured I should add it to my queue, especially since I can nag him for help with it.
  • Adobe Sign - obviously this relates to my work, but Sign has a really good API and a great development platform in general. I've done a bit with it, but I want to do more.

And I think that's it for now. I mean, hopefully I'll learn more, but in terms of planning, I should probably keep it simple. I also have an incredibly bad track record of planning what I'll learn, so the less I predict the less I'll screw up.

What Matters

I tried my best to be a good father, a good husband, and a good friend. I think I succeeded in that. I am incredibly blessed to have a wonderful, supporting wife and children who constantly surprise and delight me. I have friends that I can rely on for support and keeping me honest. For 2022, if I can support my family and friends, keep them as safe as possible, and help them succeed, than I'll consider it a win.

As always, thank you for reading, and have a wonderful new year!